Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
Review of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
“How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn’t know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for giving up each and every dream.”
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (2021). Published by Doubleday Books.
Nightbitch is America’s version of The Vegetarian by Han Kang. That is the prelude I’ve decided to start this review with, because oh my god the vibes compared to The Vegetarian are strong in this one. Even with the cover.
Which, by the way, I love the cover for Nightbitch. It’s here to the left of this paragraph, but that striking red and the hand holding the meat makes a really strong impression. And that’s how I actually remember this book’s existence in time for me to get my hands on a copy. I remembered that cover, because it was on so many must-read lists put out by an assortment of publications.
And, if you’re going on the title alone, you should expect a wild ride. It is indeed a wild, strange ride with this book.
You can also get some real clear feminist themes going on in the book which gets a thumbs up from me, but half of the time I was really, really confused at the plot and what was going on. And, thus, I dub it the cousin of The Vegetarian that was promising, but failed to deliver in a way that The Vegetarian did.
With that being said, let’s dive into this review, shall we?
Book Blurb
One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else...
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.
Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...
With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.
Content
Our main character in this novel is just referred to as “the mother.” Immediately, I picked up a statement from this choice of referring to our main character, especially because it provides commentary to American culture in a way that is super-specific.
Once women have children, they seem to lose their own identity. And, ironically, our main character points this out about other moms frequenting the library, ones that she actively tries to avoid. But the true narrator (as this story is told in third person), is deliberately choosing to refer to her as “mother” or “the mother,” thus stripping her of a name and significance in a way. We also see this in the very beginning when her husband calls her a bitch to her face, something she does not do to him.
The mother is the embodiment of many women in American society though. She went to better schools than her husband, got two master’s degrees, but here’s the catch: they were in art. It’s hard to make it as an artist, so she worked in art education and had a successful career, but when she has a son, she chooses to quit her job and merely exists around the house.
She doesn’t do anything anymore but cater to her son’s whims, which, in a way, reflect the hierarchy of patriarchy. She is now at the whims of what will become a grown man one day, and this kid is already demanding so much from this poor women.
But then the novel gets really strange. Our narrator is convinced she’s growing canine teeth, she finds new nipples on her stomach, and a cyst appears on her back, one that she thinks is an actual tail. Her husband thinks she’s nuts.
So would most readers. We watch this slow metamorphosis of the main character as she becomes the horror of the patriarchy, the nightbitch. It all starts once she ignores her son’s cries and tells him to shut up in the dead of night, and then it only gets worse from there. She also horrifies the other cult-ish mothers selling herbs because she acts so blatantly dismissive of them, their kids, and their lives that they’re actually kind of offended. But it’s okay, apparently, since they’re portrayed as having no personality anyways.
She loves her kid. She really does. But the major point of this book is looking at motherhood and seeing what it will do to you mentally. I was really surprised that this was a debut novel from Yoder because the writing was sophisticated.
You could really date it to the era it was written in based on the content, but I didn’t mind that at all. The only thing that got me questioning the content was the fact that she straight up murders a cat with a knife. I really did not want to read that and ended up skipping over the majority of it because it felt so unnecessary. Am not a fan of animal cruelty in my books at all.
Overall Thoughts
Like I said before, it’s a wild ride and I think it’s a somewhat enjoyable one. There are some moments in the writing where I felt very lulled and struggled to keep reading, but once I took a break and returned to the text I felt that it was fine to continue.
I don’t think this is a book that you should consume in one sitting, as I tend to do with my novels, but I will recommend it for anyone interested in motherhood from a feminist, slightly surrealist angle. I can also vibe with our failed-artist mother who becomes obsessed with a random ethnography book on tribal people, life be hard sometimes and we all turn into a nightbitch when it gets like this.
